Last Thursday, a who’s who of the progressive movement met for a conference call organized by Families USA and hosted by the advocacy group for government-run health care, The Herndon Alliance. The Alliance’s partners include AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others. Democratic pollsters John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg were the call’s main event, and they were there to deliver some bad news. Politico reports: “Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. … The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.”Source: Morning Bell of the Heritage Foundation.
Health care is not the only issue where the left is retreating in the face of strong disapproval from the American people. Versionista, a Portland, Oregon-based company that tracks changes to the White House website, reported last week that the Obama administration had made “whole-cloth” changes to its “Energy & Environment” issues page. Out are any references to a cap on carbon emissions and a campaign pledge to spend $150 billion on clean energy technologies. In its place the new White House site includes a three-minute Earth Day-themed video from President Barack Obama. And across the country, leftist Senate candidates in Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana have all come out against President Obama’s impending trillion dollar tax hike, due in January.
As satisfying as it is to see Obamacare’s supporters come to terms with the failure of their grand plan, it is not enough for conservatives to just say “no.” Conservatives must have real plans for reform if the American people choose to empower them. The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America chapter on Getting Health Care Reform Right recommends:
Repeal Obamacare: There is a precedent for repealing highly unpopular and misguided laws: the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988. Recently, over 70% of Missouri residents rejected a key provision of Obamacare—the requirement that individuals purchase a health insurance plan designed and approved by government bureaucrats. The House of Representatives even voted recently to repeal one provision of Obamacare that will impose draconian paperwork requirements on millions of small businesses. The easiest way to address all these grievances: repeal Obamacare.
Promote Personal Control Through Tax Equity: Today, workers who purchase coverage through their employer receive an unlimited tax break on the value of their health care benefits. However, those who purchase coverage on their own receive no comparable tax break. Ideally, the current tax exclusion should be replaced (or at the very least capped) with a system of universal tax credits for taxpayers. Medicaid and SCHIP spending should also be redirected to help low-income individuals and families purchase private health insurance
Fix Current Government Health Programs: Medicare should be reformed into a defined-contribution system in which the government provides a contribution for benefits and seniors are able to apply their contribution to the health plan that suits them best.
Promote Federal–State Partnerships: A one-size-fits-all federal solution cannot accommodate the unique and diverse health care challenges facing the states. The federal government should promote interstate commerce in health insurance, extend certain protections for those who maintain continuous coverage, and provide states with technical assistance and relief from federal rules that inhibit innovation.
Provide Portability: Individuals—not the government—should be able to choose the health coverage that best suits their needs. To accomplish this, private health insurance must be portable—that is, owned by Americans so they can take their package from job to job.
There is no better symbol for the overreach of the progressive movement into the daily lives of all Americans than Obamacare. Repealing this intolerable act and replacing it with the foundations for a truly market-based health care system is one of the best ways conservatives can capitalize on liberalism’s retreat.
Quick Hits:
•Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.
•The government is investigating at least 20 car dealerships it claims violated the rules of last year’s cash-for-clunkers program.
•Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Sunday that President Obama’s political advisers are out of touch with average Americans and need to “spend some time outside Washington.”
•Iran opened its first nuclear power plant at a ceremony on Saturday that was attended by senior officials from Iran and Russia.
•Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela suffered more civilian deaths in 2009 than both Baghdad and Mexico.
Tags: cap and trade, energy tax, Morning Bell, Obama Health Care Plan, Obamacare, patient centered health care, the Obama tax hike.
Leave a comment. Share this.
Author: Conn Carroll.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
By Assemblyman Dan Logue, for the California Political [N]ews and Views, 7/26/10
If you had a choice between paying several thousand dollars a year in higher utility, fuel, food and other costs, and temporarily postponing an ineffective global warming law until the economy improves, it would be a simple decision, right?
Well, thanks to the 800,000 voters who signed petitions to put the California Jobs Initiative on the November ballot, voters will actually have a chance to make that choice.
The California Jobs Initiative is a common-sense proposition that will temporarily suspend implementation of AB 32, the states global warming law, until our unemployment rate returns to a level closer to where it was when the law was originally adopted by the Legislature.
If successful, the initiative will save over a million jobs and save California businesses and families billions of dollars in higher energy and other costs resulting from regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas, or carbon, emissions associated with global warming.
Heres why. AB 32 requires a radical shift in where California gets its energy, necessitating huge investments in alternative power sources such as wind, solar, and hydrogen. Its estimated the transition will cause gasoline and diesel prices to increase by $3.7 billion a year, natural gas rates to go up by 57% a year, and electricity rates to rise by up to 60%.
Other AB 32 regulations are expected to increase the cost of a new home by $50,000 and add several thousand dollars to the price of a new car. And the Air Resources Board is considering a cap and trade carbon tax of $143 billion.
Those higher energy costs will translate to increased overhead for businesses large and small, who will pass all or part of that cost onto their customers in the form of higher prices not only for utilities and fuel but just about everything we use on daily basis, such as food.
Those higher prices are likely to result in a downturn in business, which in turn will lead over a million lost jobs, according to a recent study.
Its bad enough that these billions in higher costs and loss of a million jobs would come at the worst possible time, considering there are almost 2.3 million Californians already unemployed, our states chronic $20 billion budget deficit and hundreds of billions in debt. But AB 32, which was created specifically to help reduce global warming, wont make one bit of difference in terms of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
Because global warming is a global challenge, and because California accounts for a minuscule percentage of all greenhouse gas emissions, AB 32 on its own cant make a difference in global warming. The California Air Resources Board itself has conceded: California acting alone cannot reduce emissions sufficiently to change the course of climate change worldwide.
And California indeed would be acting alone if we implement AB 32 as currently scheduled. Other states and other nations have dramatically downsized their climate change plans in recognition of the fact that their economies just cant sustain the costs necessary to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I recently asked Californias non-partisan Legislative Analysts Office (LAO) to evaluate what the impact of going it alone with AB 32 would be on our states economy. The response was disturbing.
The LAO found that California-only implementation of AB 32 would be likely to adversely affect Californias economy in the near term because of the related energy price increases. This would in turn result in higher prices for goods and services and reduced production, income and jobs.
The LAO has reported elsewhere that suspending AB 32 would save local governments and the state millions in costs, and prevent loss of tax revenues as well.
One other important fact: AB 32 deals only with carbon emissions, which while associated with global warming present no threat to public health or the environment. California already has the strictest laws in the county to protect our air and water from smog and other pollutants, and those laws will remain intact under the California Jobs Initiative.
Unfortunately the Governor, the Legislature and the Air Resources Board have steadfastly refused to intervene in the timing of entirely symbolic global warming regulations that could turn our states current economic crisis into a permanent financial disaster.
Thats why the California Jobs Initiative is so important. It will protect over a million jobs and save California families and businesses billions of dollars in higher energy costs. Considering wed be spending that money and sacrificing those jobs for a global warming law that wont do anything to reduce global warming, it should be an easy choice for California voters.
oOo
Assemblyman Logue represents the 3rd Assembly District in the California Legislature, which includes the communities of Butte, Lassen, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sierra and Yuba.
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Digg!
Please click here to read Senator Dianne Feinstein's comments in 1994 about restoring the salmon run out of Friant Dam.My purpose for the title, "Sen. Feinstein Lied, Millions Died" is because it is true if you take the long-term focus. When they took away the water, many crops were lost. Does anyone remember what happened when someone came up with the brilliant idea of using our food (corn) to enhance gasoline? What happened to the price of corn? What happened to the distribution of corn worldwide?
Families Protecting the Valley has expressed strong concern over the implementation of the San Joaquin River Restoration passed by Congress.
With the Delta lawsuits that shut off the pumps the environmentalists have basically reneged on their commitment to re-circulate the water back to the Friant service area. Therefore we need to recognize that this places us in the same position that Senator Feinstein's letter addressed in 1994.
Unfortunately, sponsoring legislators such as Senators Feinstein and Boxer, and Congressmen Radanovich, Costa, and Cardoza have remained silent rather than demand the environmentalists live up to their part of the bargain.
Combined with the inequitable distribution of the losses inflicted on Friant contractors, this abomination will eventually result in 200,000 to 300,000 acres of land being fallowed in the Friant service area.
Friant farmers went in to this deal in good faith. Now, they are left holding the bag. The result is exactly what Senator Feinstein warned against and vowed to stop in 1994, but apparently she is now willing to inflict on the Valley the very disaster she believed would happen if the water was taken from the farmers on the eastside of the valley.
Since the environmentalists have reneged on the deal, maybe it is time the legislators looked at amending or rescinding the San Joaquin River Restoration bill to fulfill the intent of the Settlement to mitigate valley losses.
